178th Edition
A World Cup more than half full
Did you enjoy the World Cup? I have to admit, I just don’t get the world’s love affair with soccer. An accomplished basketball coach I once knew called it the game for kids who can’t catch. Probably not the most politically correct statement about the world’s most popular sport.
One interesting takeaway from the World Cup extravaganza was how surprised, even shocked by some accounts, foreign visitors were with their overall experience in America. Apparently, most were expecting a dark and brooding nation, as Peggy Noonan describes it in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal – “The Tartan Army Takes America.”
How did so many foreigners get such a negative perception of our country? Perhaps the better question is not how, but from whom?
With all that America has to offer, why are so many citizens dissatisfied and angry? One group, called the Democratic Socialists of America, would like to basically do away with the constitution. What the heck is going on? My apologies for returning to issues I’ve written about often, but crony capitalism and a lack of integrity have led a lot of people to think perhaps we should try another approach, namely, socialism. How far down this path we travel before experiencing the economic stagnation that socialism inevitably produces is anybody’s guess.
In the meantime, capitalists have to own our current situation. Decades of greed, corruption, and insensitivity to those struggling to keep up have caused this political pushback. Can influential leaders in the corporate sector reverse course before it is too late? Will enough of them embrace servant leadership and put the well-being of their employees before themselves, to take the wind out of the socialists’ sails? It’s not likely, but it would be an amazingly powerful transformation to witness.
One Wednesday, a few weeks ago, I played golf with a young college grad. I asked him how he could get time off to play on a weekday. He said he was unemployed. I asked him what kind of job he wanted to find. He said he wasn’t sure, nor did he seem motivated to do something about his current employment situation. While I was impressed with his golf game, I couldn’t stop wondering what kind of future this young man was destined to experience. In today’s hyper-competitive economy, what chance does an unmotivated person have to be successful? Will this young man jump on the socialism bandwagon? Perhaps college didn’t adequately prepare him for the real world. That’s not his fault, right?
I try really hard not to be a conspiracy theorist, but it does seem that there are multiple forces working against the American Dream – that through hard work, a thriving economy, and limited government, every generation can achieve more than the previous generation or at the very least, reach some acceptable level of contentment in their own personal pursuit of happiness.
Some of these forces are domestic. These include socialists, progressives, academia, entertainment, and much of the mainstream media. They just don’t think American is working the way it should and they want to change it. I think most of their ideas related to how the economy should function are idiotic, but maybe some of them will produce positive results. I sure hope so. Other forces are foreign, including China, Russia, and Iran. All three are working against our national interests and way of life.
Our challenge is to improve what needs to be changed while preserving our strengths. In other words, can we strengthen the weak without weakening the strong?
Free-market capitalism needs to replace crony capitalism. Government does too much and should be right-sized. Integrity needs to return as a non-negotiable core principle. Do these three things and we can all go play golf on a weekday.
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Michael Kayes
*These views are my personal opinions and are not the viewpoints of any company or organization.